Bill Frezza is a 35-year veteran of the technology industry. After graduating from MIT with degrees in both science and engineering, Bill spent his early years at Bell Laboratories. Since then, he has worked as a product manager, salesman, marketer, entrepreneur, consultant, technology evangelist, and venture capitalist. Bill holds seven patents and has been investing in early-stage tech startups for the last 17 years as a partner in a venture capital firm. Since 2008, he has been writing weekly opinion columns for publications such as RealClearMarkets.com, Forbes.com, the Huffington Post and Bio-IT World and appeared regularly on TV and radio outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and WBAL. In 2011, he was a finalist for the Hoiles Prize for excellence in American journalism and in October 2013, he became the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 2013-2014 Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow. In January 2014, Bill began hosting RealClear Radio Hour airing Saturdays on Boston’s WXKS 1200AM & WJMN 94.5FM-HD2.

Give Greece What It Deserves: Communism

Once in a great while an opportunity comes along to deliver justice to a people, giving them what they truly deserve. Greece’s time has come.

It must be dawning on all but the most obtuse member of the banking elite that they can’t possibly steal enough money from German taxpayers to save the Greek government from default. Put it off, maybe, but collapse is inevitable.

Once this happens, what is the purpose of casting Greece into some selective temporary financial purgatory where the irrelevant Greek economy can continue embarrassing anyone foolish enough to lend their dysfunctional government a dime? Why not go all the way and give the country what many of its people have been violently demanding for almost a century?

Let them have Communism.

Hard as it is for young people to believe, Communism was once a major historical force holding billions of people in thrall. Outside the halls of elite universities, who still takes it seriously? Sure we have Cuba, where the Castro deathwatch is the last thing standing between that benighted penal colony and an inevitable makeover by Club Med. Then there is Venezuela, though hope is fading that Hugo Chavez will carry the Bolivarian banner much longer now that he’s busy sucking down FOLFOX cocktails while checking for signs that his hair is falling out. And frankly, a psychopathic family dynasty ruling a nation of stunted zombies hardly makes North Korea a proper Communist exemplar.

What the world needs, lest we forget, is a contemporary example of Communism in action. What better candidate than Greece? They’ve been pining for it for years, exhibiting a level of anti-capitalist vitriol unmatched in any developed country. They are temperamentally attuned to it, having driven all hard working Greeks abroad in search of opportunity. They pose no military threat to their neighbors, unless you quake at the sight of soldiers marching around in white skirts. And they have all the trappings of a modern Western nation, making them an uncompromised test bed for Marxist theories. Just toss them out of the European Union, cut off the flow of free Euros, and hand them back the printing plates for their old drachmas. Then stand back for a generation and watch.

The land that invented democracy used it to perfect the art of living at the expense of others, an example all Western democracies appear intent on emulating. Being the first to run out of other people’s money makes Greece truly ripe to take the next logical step beyond socialism.

As wrenching as it will be we can take comfort in the fact that Greece doesn’t have much of an economy to disrupt. The only Greek industry that’s worth a damn is tourism, rapidly collapsing as travelers get tired of being stranded by strikes while dodging Molotov cocktails. The rest of us can find plenty of other sources of lamb chops, yogurt, and olive oil. They crushed the concept of private property long ago under the burden of environmental, cultural, and social regulations that govern land use. Wouldn’t it be instructive to let them have a go at building a workers’ paradise to remind us what state enforced equality looks like?

Unlike neighboring Balkan nations that got to experience the joys of Communism after the Second World War, Greece was brought back from the brink by massive western intervention as well as a Churchillian side deal that obliged Stalin to butt out. The nasty civil war between the Greek Communist Party (the KKE) and government forces backed by Britain and the U.S. set the stage for decades of struggle between communist sympathizers who never gave up the dream, and right wing juntas determined to rule by force. The uneasy peace that has existed since the colonels were booted merely masks underlying tensions as every Greek worries, is someone else working fewer hours than I am?

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This article is both unfair and uninformed (the two are not coincidental). Greece has an un-reformed, Stalinist Communist Party which, along with the other extreme leftist party (SYRIZA), consists of anywhere from 7 to 10 % of the electorate. The Greek Communist Party, a vestige of the Greek Civil war, is the last dinosaur of its type in the world. True to form, it is very organized, very destructive and very loud. Its rantings are naturally what seduces and gets the attention of the foreign press. Of course, The Party (KKE) is against “Imperialism”, “Capitalism” and for a “government of the working people” It is foolish to confuse it’s anti-market, anti-American rantings with the opinions of the Greek people. The KKE’s executive has already said that the Party does not recognize the Greek Constitution, and that it wants Greece’s exit from NATO, from the euro and even from the EU itself. Though it does not have many seats in Parliament, it controls a union (PAME) of thugs who have shown there ability to shut down the country with their brutal strikes. The Greek Communists are violently against ANY change, no matter how small, that they cannot control. Much more than any conceivable foreign enemy, the biggest threat to stability and progress in Greece today are the Greek Communists and SYRIZA their fellow travelers who have often stooped to political violence. They are not Greece and they are not the Greek people.

mr Bill Fezza, wouldn’t it be better to check your facts before you print what you want to appear as a serious article? Who knows why the fact that some great grandfather of yours came from a poor area of the country which suffered from the left wing forces during the civil war makes you think that you know enough about Greece and the EU to share your opinion with the world is beyond me. The inconsistencies and plain errors in your article are so many that it makes me wonder what you were thinking…

arhedia (I know what it means) above, has written a rarely-understood fact about the euro. Luxembourg and Ireland were the only two countries that qualified to join the euro under established criteria. Germany itself did not qualify and Theo Weigel, Finance Minister at the time, had to juggle the books and include Germany’s gold reserves as part of the country’s income for the year in order to bring Germany’s deficit to acceptable levels. Ultimately, joining the euro was a political, not an economic, decision and no country that wanted to join was excluded.

Facts, however, are boring, whereas BS and nonsense always excite the hate-mongers and the know-nothings. Pity.

I have to admit that while more than Greece’s deserved share of inaccurate, discriminatory and belittling articles have been published over the past few months, yours is the first one to really offend me enough to join Forbes.com in order to post my comment. Not only are your personal misguided understandings of Greece’s history and more importantly the EU’s economic history of the last 10 years irrationally portrayed as fact, the conclusion of communism as the next logical step does not even follow. The situation in Greece continues to deeply sadden myself as a Greek, however it is slightly comforting to see that in the comment section everyone strives to correct the falsehoods that you are immorally spreading rather than agree with you. The most shocking part of your post is the part about you being a Greek-American, and cannot for the life of me understand why you would write off your country and its people, something I assume you have done because even an idiot who knew nothing of Greece before it started making headlines could have gathered more accurate information by reading 3 different sources. On the same note I don’t either understand how you hold a job as a “journalist”; I use quotations because the word seems to be losing its meaning when people like yourself are allowed to be in a position that can affect a person’s understanding of current affairs, when again, you clearly know nothing about the subject. The sheer level of condescension instead of an argument that would logically lead you to feel the way you do is why you are being attacked and labeled a racist. Is there a term for a racist who discriminates his own? Bill, I do wish that you keep this brilliant work up in the hopes that one day your employers will have had enough and you can enjoy the feeling of being unemployed like 20% of Greeks today (almost 40% among people under 30). These are people who never lived beyond their means, who did not evade their taxes, are not corrupt and are for the most part not communists. These are the people who are truly suffering, not your precious German tax-payer.

Words are the writers tools, abuse them and they do not work. You toss about the word “communism” to mean just about anything that you do not like. It creates a meaningless blog full.

Further, how did Greece get into the current mess? Did the “communist” Greek government just wake up one day say we should borrow unimaginable billions of Euro or Dollars to develop our nations so we can pay back the billions in loans already made? No, it was none other than Goldman-Sachs who put together the current Greek loan package (they must be “communists” too, must they not?). They arranged the huge loans from the gigantic “communist” banks of western Europe and they repackaged the them as “debt-swaps” to hedge-funds.

The Greek political elite of all parliament parties are agents of Russia and China, they destroy on purpose Greek economy in order to to sell the country to Russia and China oligarchs and blackmail Europe to accept lending money from China in order to save the ”South”. Even the demonstrators are financed with state money. For Greek speeking readers check this http://liberalcreta.pblogs.gr/tags/den-plirono-gr.html Read who the Kgb/fsb controlled regime is giving the Greek gold mines for almost free to Russian friendly state oligarch Bobolas. Check the EU document that no one TV station ever mentioned in the so-called ”Cradle of democracy” http://www.adslgr.com/forum/showthread.php?t=255302

The demonstrators are fascists not communists. The modern Communist Party is in practice a fascist party. It is the result of the violent replacement of the party’s leadership by the Russian sosialfascists in 1956 and has nothing to do with the party of the resistance in WW2. The only real democratic and left party in Greece that has predicted all of the world political developments is the small party of OAKKE that the regime tries desperately to silence http://www.oakke.gr/english1.htm http://www.oakke.gr/

It’s typical of Greek-Americans, such as the writer, to find fault with Greeks and to suggest that they are lazy, and always asking themselves, “[I]s someone else working fewer hours than I am?”

The Greeks are experiencing the most savage austerity measures ever imposed on a developed country. They are guinea pigs for what can be done to bring down the standard of living of workers in Europe and the US in order to make them more competitive with developing nations. Don’t you think enough experiments have been done to Greece without now an experiment in communism?

The Greeks would be better off with the drachma and out of the EU. You mention there are other sources for olive oil, etc. Well, is there any country that is indispensable? Aren’t there alternative sources for every product? In any case, I have great faith in the Greek people and their ability to establish a strong economy. Unfortunately they have been governed by leaders who do not look out for their best interests.

You mention something very important: faith. You have faith, and that is good, very good. Maybe more Greeks, or all Greeks, need to have faith now, in order to get out of this difficult situation. OK, maybe easier said than done. On the other side: where will strikes and demonstrations (“This is not my debt”) lead to (they’re probably not being perceived as having faith)?

Regarding the bad government it is surely a difficult subject and a typical case of: “What was there first, the egg or the chicken”. I dare to say that a lot of people living in Greece (i.e. Greeks and non-Greeks, sic!) have benefitted greatly in financial terms from those ‘bad governments’. After all: the people kept on voting these governments again and again and again… Isn’t there a saying that goes like: “Every people gets the government it deserves”? If a people again and again votes the same guys (families), I would assume it is likely that they don’t find that government that bad, or at least the benefits outweighed the negative aspects.

Would it be safe to assume that in the current situation, where everything is heading towards hitting rock bottom, stop blaming others and being a good example in having faith is one of the few ways to help Greece march into the right direction?

My first reaction when reading this article was that of some right wing, ignorant racist ranting in a paternalistic manner, about what a country “deserves” as if it were a child being banished to the ‘naughty corner’ of communism. But upon further reflection, I believe that the author cannot truly believe what he writes and is merely stating an extreme case to invoke discussion. Otherwise, his views belong more in the Goebels PR machine rather than a respectable journal. Greece does require reform on many levels, but is it really much different to many democracies that have binged on free and easy credit from the pre GFC days. Credit and debt that was created by lax US banks lending subprime mortgages to borrowers that could never repay loans. Why should the Greek’s suffer for such poor lending practice? Is the national debt odious debt? Does it belong to its people? This can be debated for a long time and it is pleasing to see some of the better informed replies to the article about Greece. However perhaps there is some merit in Greece looking to the East for a solution to its woes and not restrict itself solely to the West, as the US and other western countries have many times shafted Greece in pursuit of their foreign policy self interests. Greece perhaps should balance itself between the East & West as it has done so historically for centuries over time, to avoid being colonised by way of credit. Greece perhaps should seek more foreign investment from China, Russia and the middle east as well as Europe. For example, it should not be forced to buy German submarines or French jets at inflated prices in exchange for loans (bribes?) that will never be repaid. Perhaps let the Chinese establish a military base in the Aegean? If it is good enough for the East Timorise to accept military aid from China, why not Greece? Greece has always been at the gateway of the east and west and has profited and suffered for it throughout history. So securing alliances more broadly to rescue itself from the crisis that by and large, was created by a failed western banking system, perhaps similar to what the US now faces with the need to expand it’s debt ceiling may be the solution. Interesting times ahead. But if the Author is serious about his views, he should not be casting stones if the US is itself, in a glass house, or perhaps the US should be sent to the ‘naughty corner’ of communism too.